Am I the only one here growing weary of the neoconfederate rhetoric that seems
to get recycled over and over in this discussion group?  Perhaps it might be
appropriate to open a separate discussion group to revisit the issue of
partisan versions of civil war history, rather than going round and round with
assertions of one sort or another.

From the point of view of simple historiographical theory (and from the point of
view of the familiar proverb) the victors write the histories.  To claim that
many histories of the civil war suffer from a one-sided point of view is
neither new nor radical.  It's simply true.  This does not mean all "northern"
histories are all bunk, nor are all "southern" histories all bunk.  It is
important to remember that reversing a negative does not necessarily produce a
positive.  The fact that northern victors and their heirs wrote most of the
reigning histories of the civil war does not necessarily mean they are wrong on
every count, as I've said.  More importantly, neither does it mean that a
better history could be produced simply by turning northern explanations on
their heads.

Big historical events are always more complicated than the sort of claims made
here recently would seem to allow.  To claim, as a recent participant has done,
that the failure of the Confederacy came about because they weren't given a
chance, is patently absurd.  Many nations have been formed in spite of armed
opposition and "invasion."  The American Revolution, for instance, was a civil
war between metropolitan and colonial Britons.  Despite superior economic
power, superior military and naval strength, and so forth, the metropolitan
Britons were defeated, and the colonial Britons became Americans.  Or
something.  The Confederacy lost in a struggle the terms of which were not
dictated by another power, but in a struggle the seceding states started, and
in starting defined the methods both parties in the civil war would have to
follow.  To say the Confederacy wasn't given (or should have been given) a
chance to secede is not history.  It's fiction, and belongs either in novels or
in the interesting field of counterfactual histories.

Anyway, in a forum forthrightly designed for the discussion of research and
writing about Virginia history it would not be unreasonable to expect a higher
level of discourse than brief exchanges of partisan assertions.  My own rule of
thumb in studying the way historical arguments are presented is a simple
principle of argumentation: assertion is not demonstration.  In simpler words,
saying it's so doesn't make it (or convince anybody it is) so.  I might be
tempted to read a thoughtful, well-reasoned account of the position of
neoconfederate thinkers, but I am disheartened, annoyed, and bored with the
one-liners we've been getting.

There are some very knowledgeable people here, and I've been learning a good
deal from some of the exchanges.  But I've also noticed that some of them have
fallen silent of late.  Let's hope they've not left for good.

Cheers -- KJB